Collected Poems

by Chuck Guilford

No U Turn

Somehow the rear wheels keep up with the front two. The steering wheel plays in my hand. Behind us, the churning clouds of our dust fall on fences and Queen Anne’s lace.

Something like a road has a grip on our Goodyears, persuading that bulging black rubber to keep turning over and take us along to get someplace we just call “away.”

In back of the last chance filling station, just past an abandoned motel, the highway got swallowed in dust, disappeared in the rear view mirror, that mocking glass like a One Way sign stuck on our bug‑spattered windshield.

What we’re on doesn’t look like a road anymore, so‑ill defined, unmarked, untraveled. It’s only a gap on the county map, as vague as a myth or a rumor. It’s nothing but sand getting lost under ferns and the ferns fading into the forest.

And yet, who knows? What’s left to lose? Some gas? Some time? Some rubber?

We can touch the truth in whatever we find: The county landfill ripe with disowned odors or a lake that levels the sky.